


Cages

by Severina



Category: Dawn of the Dead (2004)
Genre: comm: talking_muses
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2006-09-16
Updated: 2006-09-16
Packaged: 2017-10-20 02:52:00
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 654
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/207990
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Severina/pseuds/Severina
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dead things. Sometimes she thinks that’s all that’s left. Plastic muzak from hidden speakers, plastic trees in the mall courtyard, plastic smiles from her fellow refugees.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Cages

**Author's Note:**

> Written for LJ's "talking_muses" community  
> Prompt: photo of a barred window

She sits well back from the edge of the roof, and tries to pretend there is nothing below. Just the blue sky overheard, birds circling and calling out to each other. A cool breeze on her upturned face.

But Monica has never been very good at make-believe. And she can’t escape the smell, the putrid stench of rotting flesh and the copper scent of old blood that never fades, like…

 _…the stink of the slaughterhouse, clinging to her father’s skin when he got home from the nightshift. Work-boots on the table, shouting for his coffee, and she scurries back and forth from the kitchen to the living room, serving him eggs and bacon and home-fries, pushing her hair behind her ears and knowing she doesn’t have time for another shower and that she will carry the combined scent of fried food and dead animals with her through every class._

 _She tells him she’s got to hurry to school and he reminds her that she’s wasting her time, she’ll end up working in a greasy spoon her whole life anyway. Trapped in a blue-collar life in a blue-collar town. A dead-end life. Dead._

 

Dead things. Sometimes she thinks that’s all that’s left. Plastic muzak from hidden speakers, plastic trees in the mall courtyard, plastic smiles from her fellow refugees.

She scoops gravel from the rooftop into her hand and lets it drift from her palm, like…

 _… the way she left home, at 15, not running away precisely but merely drifting off, coming home less and less frequently until one day she finds herself 500 miles from Stanton with a trucker who constantly pinches her ass and tells her she gives good head. By that time, she’s had lots of practice._

 _She leaves the trucker the first time he hits her, and drifts again, this time toward Los Angeles. She has no money and no delusions of stardom. She just figures if she’s going to starve, she may as well do it in the sunshine._

 _She’s young and blonde, and she knows to paint her lips and pout prettily, so she gains access to all the right clubs and dances, dances endlessly, and sleeps with whoever will have her. She catches a glimpse of herself in the wall of mirrors at The Pleasure Dome and for a brief and frightening moment, she doesn’t recognize herself. Then she squares her shoulders, lights a cigarette and walks on._

 

Cigarettes. She leans back on her elbows and inhales, savouring every damaging lungful -- it‘s not like she‘s going to worry about cancer now. They’re almost out of smokes, anyway; just three packs left. She and CJ have hidden them in the Childrens section of Book Mark, because no-one is going to search for them there, and she feels slightly devious but not at all guilty at keeping them from Steve.

Cigarettes will soon be something of another life, something that gets left behind…

 _… abandoned in a roadside diner. The band, some two-bit four-piece from Nowheresville, tells her they’ve found someone else to help with wardrobe, and Monica can see her loitering outside the tour bus, long brown hair and pert tits and she wants to scream, wants to cry, but her screaming and crying days are long over._

 _She gets a job slinging hash browns and saves her money. Starts hitching again, making her way toward Milwaukee, not for any reason but simply because it’s a name she recognizes on the map. She’s traveling through Everett with a used-car salesman who accepts her rebuff of his advances with a shrug and a good-natured laugh when the shit hits the fan._

 

Monica squints her eyes against the sunlight and tries to make out the outlines of outlying buildings. Unattainable in the distance.

There was a time, once, when Monica wanted to be an architect. She barely remembers anymore. For as long as she can remember, she’s only wanted to be free.


End file.
